The Google 80% Wastage Rule

tyra does paris
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Finally someone who I totally agree with about Google, and more specifically the decreasing quality of employees as more are hired. To me, once you get to the 2021st engineer you hired that year, you aren't exactly guaranteed the next page-rank, adsense, desktop search and gmail. In the last year the law of decreasing intellectual capital return has led to (crap like) g-accelerator/ blog search/ personalised home page 1+2 /feed reader. Not to mention lack of network integration. Its Yahoo in 1996. I'm sure psychotherapists (preferably majoring in web 2.0) analysing the "blog-language" of the gushing praise/ screenshots/ rumours of a non-launch etc, would say g-fans may be "PROJECTING" their infantile fantasies of reverse-auction IPOs, the Web O/S, and Dark Fibre Wireless. Myself, who has always preferred Jung rather than Freuds outlook on Google, wishes for the basics : Google should try and help provide better blog tools, integrated into reading and searching today's internet, while offering me "RELEVANT" marketing offers. (and maybe have a small secret team that builds out gmail beyond new features like 'autosave' once a quarter) Unfortunately with Schmidt, Serg and Larry.. Google (a media business) is run by engineers in a scattergun hypergrowth way, that wants to be a software business, but absolutely isnt (there is not even an enterprise division with sales) They have been lucky to to be subsidised by mum + dad dumbo capital markets and a keyword search and contextual ad engine that is market leader, this quarter. But as we know search leadership changes every 2-5 years. I agree with William Grosso, some highlights :

"Google has about 5000 employees. Craigslist has 18 employees. What does this tell us? It probably tells us that the wave of euphoria/excitement/dread that washed over the internet last week was generated by approximately 1/560'th of Google... Google is actually engaging in a shallow strategy of intelligent reaction and all the deep strategic notions attributed to them are actually being invented by the onlookers in real-time... You still wind up wondering: what’s the other half of Google doing? And, when we find out what they were doing, what will we think they were doing ?"

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Hansel: I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree. Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.